In this interval of blessed tranquillity after the titanic struggle to choose the next president
of the “world’s greatest nation” (same guy as last time), and the world-shaking choice of the next
leader of the “Middle Kingdom” (Xi Jinping), a delicious moment of sheer silliness. The British
Broadcasting Corporation has banned a science program because it might trigger an interstellar
invasion.

They would not normally ban a program made by Brian Cox. He is a jewel in the BBC’s crown: a
particle physicist with rock-star appeal — he played in two semi-professional bands, and in the
right light he looks like a younger Steven Tyler — who can also communicate with ordinary human
beings. They just forbade him to make the episode of
Stargazing Live in which he planned to send a message to the aliens.

Cox wanted to point the Jodrell Bank radio telescope at a recently discovered planet circling
another star, in the hope of making contact with an alien civilization. The BBC executives refused
to let him do it, on the grounds that since no one knew what might happen, it could be in breach of
“health and safety” guidelines.

Cox, a serious scientist, knew exactly what would happen: nothing. Even if there are hostile
aliens out there, space is so vast that light from the nearest star, traveling at 186,000 miles per
second, takes four years to reach us. He was just doing his bit in the centuries-long scientific
campaign to convince people that they are not at the center of everything.

The BBC “suits,” who do think that they are at the center of everything, weren’t having any of
that. If there are aliens out there, and they find out we are here, their first reaction will
probably be to come here and eat our children. And then the BBC will get blamed for it. Sorry,
Brian. Drop the radio telescope and step away from it slowly.

The suits richly deserve the derision that has come their way, but if there really is life
elsewhere, and even perhaps intelligent life, then we aren’t at the center of anything any more. We
are, as Douglas Adams once put it in
The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “far out in the uncharted backwaters of the
unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy.”

We used to believe that the whole universe literally revolved around us. Then came Copernicus.
But we went on believing that we are very special. We look like other animals, but we are so
special that we don’t cease to exist when we die. We give the universe meaning just by being
alive.

A bit at the time, however, science has been destroying all of our traditional ideas about our
own centrality. And here comes another blow.

We now know of the existence of some 800 “exoplanets,” and the number is doubling every year or
so. Most of these planets are gas giants like Jupiter or Saturn, not at all like Earth, simply
because the giants are easier to detect. But what we have really been looking for is planets like
our own. We
know that life thrives here.

The astronomers at the European Southern Observatory in Chile have now found such a planet. It
is called HD 40307g, and it orbits a small orange-colored sun 42 light-years from here. The planet
is rocky, like Earth, and it orbits its star at a distance where the temperature allows water to
exist as a liquid. It is certainly a candidate for life.

There are between 200 billion and 400 billion stars in our home galaxy, the Milky Way, and
probably at least as many planets. If only one in a hundred of those planets harbours life, which
is likely to be an underestimate, then there are two billion living planets. We are not unique and
special. We are as common as dirt.

Douglas Adams also wrote: “If life is going to exist in a universe of this size, then the one
thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.” But we are gradually acquiring exactly
that, and it doesn’t really hurt. It is possible to be aware of your own cosmic insignificance and
still love your children. Even though they are without significance, too.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45
countries.